‘Black Box’ at Gallery éf Asakusa, 16 – 20 October

After the first development of ‘Black Box’ at the Kazuo Ohno Studio in September 2012, the performance will now take place within an installation at Gallery éf in Asakusa, a 150 year old Edo-period storehouse.

The installation runs from 16-20 October with performances on 19 and 20 October 2013.

“It is not only nothingness (mu), but here ‘nothing’ has a form, this is exactly the space that butoh is searching for…Dominique is searching for a new invisible space which only comes out of her body, beyond any intellectual meanings….it was excellent that she quoted from Japanese traditional culture/Ikebana, Noh, Calligraphy, and appropriated them well instead of falling into orientalism.”
Shinichi Takeshige, dance critic

‘Black Box’ is a performance and installation conceived and presented by London-based artist, DominiqueBB.
The ‘Black Box’ is inspired by the feverish defilement and destruction of a Mikoshi procession described in the first chapter of Mishima’s book ‘Confessions of a Mask’. ‘Black Box’ also takes its name from the term used to describe a theatre. Within the Black Box, all forms disintegrate and new ones take shape. The ‘Black Box’ is at once the void, the essence and the secret of what remains.

“The secret first of all relates to certain contents. The content is too big for its form…or else the contents themselves have a form, but that form is covered, doubled, or replaced by a simple container, envelope, or box… There is always a perception finer than yours, a perception of your imperceptible, of what is in your box.”
‘Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal’ in Mille Plateaux, G.Deleuze & F. Guattari

The space at Gallery éf in Asakusa was originally built in 1868 and remains the embodiment of Edo architecture. It has miraculously survived two great fires: huge earthquake in 1923 and bombing under the 2nd world war, making it a ‘perfect cube’ of endurance and indestructability.www.gallery-ef.com